Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; December 21, 2025
Readings: Luke 2:8-20; True Christian Religion §§118, 119
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In this portion of the service we’re going to focus on the words that the heavenly host said to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (Luke 2:14). Why did the angels choose these words?
This was one of the most wonderful moments that has ever been recorded in all of history: God had been born on earth, and the heavens literally opened so that the angels could share their excitement and their joy. It’s easy to appreciate how awesome this would have been for the shepherds: there they were, on an ordinary night; and then, there was the glory of God, shining around them; and then they saw a host of angels with their own eyes. They were told something wonderful, something they were surely not expecting to be told when they went out into those fields: “There is born to you this day … a Savior…” (v. 11). They would have remembered these things vividly for the rest of their lives.
What isn’t quite as obvious is that this moment would have been even more wonderful for the angels. Because they understood it. They knew why the Lord’s advent was necessary; they knew what He would accomplish. And they’d been waiting for Him for so long. The first prophecies of the coming of the Lord are given in the book of Genesis, which was written thousands of years before the Lord was born (e.g. Gen. 3:15). And in the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told that the angels of heaven and the people of the Most Ancient Church knew that the Lord must be born long before Genesis was even written (see SH §§250-260, 2523, 2661.2). What’s the longest that you’ve ever waited for a good thing? The answer is certainly not “thousands of years.”
For just a moment, that heavenly host that appeared to the shepherds was able to share the thrill of the fulfilment of millennia of anticipation. They did this by saying thirteen words: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Actually it’s just eleven words in the original Greek. Why did they pick those eleven words? What do these words really mean? The better we understand them, the better we understand what that the angels wanted to share with the shepherds that night. And the joy they shared with the shepherds is joy that they will share with us right now, if they can.
But before we dig into the meaning of these words, let’s take a step back and consider what the angels knew, and why the Lord’s birth was so significant to them. The people of the Lord’s church at the time might have had a vague idea that they lived in a troubled era—but the angels would have known that the era was far more than “troubled.” The Lord’s kingdom was at a crisis point. The church on earth had failed, and the hells had become so powerful that they were extinguishing heaven’s connection with people on earth. The way the Heavenly Doctrine puts it is that “utter damnation stood threatening at the gate” (TCR §§3, 121.3). Hell was almost powerful enough to take away our spiritual freedom and damn us forever.
And it wasn’t just people on earth who were in danger: the heavens themselves were starting to be swallowed up. That’s a bewildering idea, so we’re going to turn to a part of the Heavenly Doctrine that explains it. This reading is from True Christian Religion, and is printed on the back of your handout. The redemption spoken of here is the universal redemption that the Lord accomplished when He came to earth [read portions of §§118, 119].
So the core idea here is that all of the heavens together with the church on earth are like one human being in the Lord’s sight—and if part of that person dies, all of it dies. These passages use a number of analogies or comparisons to illustrate this idea, which I didn’t read to you; but one of them is gangrene in the feet. A gangrenous wound in one part of the body will eventually kill the whole body.
The real point is simply that the angels knew that they were in danger. They needed to be saved. And of course, everyone on on earth also needed to be saved, though they didn’t know it. The angels also knew that only the Lord could do what needed to be done. True Christian Religion says, “this redemption could not have been accomplished except by God incarnate” (§124). The angels acknowledged that they could do nothing on their own, and that they needed God—think of the humility and openness of spirit that go with that acknowledgment.
Of course, the angels came to the shepherds the night the Lord was born, and on that night His work on earth had only just begun; His people had not yet been redeemed. But a tremendous step towards redemption had been taken. Something new had happened, something that had never been done before: the Word had become flesh. And what God sets out to do is guaranteed to be done. The Lord was still a little baby that night, but the angels knew that He was born a Savior and that He would save heaven and earth. Divine love does not fail. We’re told in the Heavenly Doctrine that while He was on earth the Lord Himself, “was filled repeatedly with an inmost confidence and faith that, because it was pure love out of which He was fighting for the salvation of the whole human race, He could not but be victorious” (SH §1812). So in a way, the angels saw and celebrated the end of the Lord’s work on earth as soon as that work began. The Lord was on the job, and they knew they were going to be okay.
So they said, “Glory to God in the highest.” They gave to God the highest degree of glory they could give. And what is “glory”? That word means many things. On one level it means light—brilliant light. So in the story we’re told that the shepherds were out in the fields, and that an angel stood before them, and “the glory of the Lord shone around them” (Luke 2:8, 9). The Word often speaks of the glory of the Lord in a way that invites us to picture it as brightness. For example, in Exodus we read, “Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days…. The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain” (24:16, 17). Note that in this example the glory of the Lord is covered by a cloud—it’s visible, but it’s also veiled.
But “brightness” is just one of the meanings of the word “glory.” The word also means “reputation” or “honor” or “greatness.” Think about what it means when we say that this or that person is “pursuing glory”—it means that they want to make a name for themselves. And the Heavenly Doctrine says that in the highest sense, “glory” means truth. We read: “in the highest sense ‘glory’ is the Divine Truth which emanates from the Lord; and Divine Truth appears before angels’ eyes as the light and splendor from the Sun, which is the Lord” (SH §8427). So glory means the Lord’s truth, and it also means the power and greatness that go with that truth, on a lower level it means the light and splendor that also go with that truth. And what the angels were saying is that all of that—every bit of it—is God’s. All glory that can ever be given is to be given to God, because He alone is worthy of it. He alone was able to redeem us.
What those angels really meant to say becomes even clearer when you compare what they said about glory with some of the other passages in the Word that speak of glory. In the Psalms we read: “Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory; because of Your mercy, because of Your truth” (115:1). Glory does not belong to us: it belongs to the God of mercy and truth. The angels understood this so well that night.
Another passage that speaks of glory is this prophecy of the Lord’s advent from the book of Isaiah:
The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together…. (40:3-5)
When the Lord was born on earth His glory was revealed; the veil was taken away. He made Himself visible. Again, the angels understood this, or at least partially understood it. So they celebrated His glory, and at the same time they testified that His glory had been revealed. “Glory to God in the highest.”
And of course, that isn’t the only thing they said: they also said, “and peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” Were those words a wish, or a statement? Were the angels wishing peace and goodwill upon people on earth—or were they simply saying that the Lord had made peace on earth? The answer is probably, “both.” Of course the angels wish us peace; of course they bear us nothing but goodwill. Good people on earth are like that; surely the angels, who are filled with the Lord’s vitality, wish us peace and wish us well.
We might wonder why they chose to wish us peace instead of joy or giddy excitement. But they said “peace” because they know that the deepest joy is found in peace, and is experienced as peace. In the book Heaven and Hell we’re told, “There are two inmost things of heaven, namely, innocence and peace. These are said to be inmost things because they proceed directly from the Lord. From innocence comes every good of heaven, and from peace every delight of good” (§285). Every delight of good, or every good delight, comes ultimately from the peace that is inmost in heaven. We’re told that that peace is in its essence, “the Divine joy of the Lord’s Divine love” (§286). That’s what the angels wish for us. Their words, “peace on earth, goodwill toward men” are an expression of a most complete desire for our happiness.
And the angels were also saying that peace was already with us: because the Lord had been born, and He is Peace itself (ML §394; cf. HH §§285, 287). Where the Lord is present, there is peace. That’s why, when He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, His first words were, “Peace to you” (Luke 24:36; John 20:19, 21, 26). So the angels celebrated the glory of God, and they celebrated that He had brought peace to earth; it was all part of rejoicing in what He had done.
Unfortunately, none of us were among the shepherds who saw the heavenly host that night. That would have been something to see. But though more than two thousand years have passed, the hearts’ desires of the angels of heaven have not changed. They still rejoice for what the Lord has done; they rejoice that He stooped down and saved us when no one else could. They still bear us goodwill: they still want to share that joy. And they are nearer than we think. The Lord said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). If we choose to follow God, the angels will accept us as one of themselves. And they’ll be with us. In the quiet of our minds we’ll hear them—a heavenly host—echoing our words every time we give thanks to God, every time we say, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matt. 6:13).